


Assist

by james



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Present Tense, Psychotropic Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 21:16:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/james/pseuds/james
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint is choking and he can't fight his way clear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assist

Clint comes awake all at once, but he doesn't know where he is or what's going on because it's dark and he's splayed out on his back and the single most urgent thing is _someone is choking him._ He jerks his head away, but they're holding on tight with one hand on the back of his head and one hand over his mouth and he can't breathe. He yanks at his head again and he's trying to get his hands up, shove whoever it is away and his arms are tangled in something, held down. 

Voices are shouting with alarm and desperation and fuck them, Clint thinks, and he struggles harder. The voices grow sharp and there's a buzzing in his head and the hands on his face aren't going anywhere. He kicks out, more desperate because he's going to choke, going to suffocate and he's not going to die from someone holding their hand over his mouth. He tries to free his hands, tries to jerk his entire body towards his captor and all he can feel is the pressure on the back of his head and the pressure over his entire face, cupping his nose and mouth and pressing in. 

He opens his mouth to scream and he hears only muffled noise, feels the warmth of his voice pushed back over his skin and realises that no one can hear him like this. He's got to get his arms or legs free and he wrenches his entire body, trying to get away and somebody's shouting and the hands on his head only tighten their grip more.

There's an arm, now, across his chest and it's slipping up to his neck and he doesn't even know what's got him, can't remember who he was fighting that they've caught him like this and want to crush him to death. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears and he screams again and the voices are clattering and shouting back and he can't make out any words in all the din. Suddenly there's a voice in his ear and he knows it.

"Shh," the voice whispers, and the softness surprises him into freezing for just a moment. "Shh, calm down." It comes again and Clint would know he's being lured in so they can kill him easier except -- he knows that voice. He turns towards it, still unable to see anything but it's Phil whispering in his ear and he sounds calm, unperturbed, like Clint's only waking from a nightmare instead of being strangled to death by the enemy.

As he stops fighting, Clint feels the hands and arms on his body relaxing -- still everywhere, arms and legs and chest, ready to hold him down should he move. The hands on his head haven't shifted at all and he opens his mouth to ask Phil why, what's going on, and he gasps.

He realises he's tasting pure oxygen. 

"It's all right," Phil is saying, and there's another hand on his head now, brushing through his hair and it's familiar, and soothing, even if Clint still doesn't know what's going on. He trusts that voice though and he tries to look for Phil, but can only hear him, still saying that everything is fine and he can rest easy.

Clint wants to ask what his definition of _fine_ is, only as he breathes Clint realises that he's breathing, not choking, so maybe no one is trying to kill him after all. The shape of the pressure on his face makes sense, now, feeling the hard edges digging in around his mouth and the taste of oxygen tell him _mask,_ not hand. Someone has been holding an oxygen mask to his face and he understands suddenly that the hands on his head have been holding it on while he struggled.

Clint wants to open his eyes but he can't, or maybe they're open and there's just no light. He can't quite tell, but Phil's voice is still there and the sharp patter of other voices are coalescing into those he recognises, as well. Tony, high above, is demanding to know where something is, saying he'll go get it if it doesn't show soon. Steve answers, down here next to Phil, and Clint wonders if Steve is the one holding the mask on. 

Natasha's voice from near his feet and she's threatening to shoot Tony. Clint wants to laugh because he has no idea what's going on, but there has never been a day go by that Natasha hasn't gotten to threaten to hurt Tony for one reason or another, most of them deserved and all of them Clint has begged her to let him watch.

Clint tries to reach up, and hands are still on his arms but Thor's asking, now, if it's okay. Phil says that it is, and the hands are gone from Clint's arm and he reaches up, finds his hand caught, lightly. He feels someone squeeze his hand and he thinks, crazily, he shouldn't recognise Phil's grip, but he swears that he does. 

"Just breathe, Clint," and Clint does, obeying orders one of the few times in his life and he knows he can tease Phil about that, later. He hopes it won't be too long. Everything is still muddy in his brain and he doesn't remember what happened or why he's lying here on his back, being forced to breathe pure oxygen.

He tries again to open his eyes and this time it works and he squints against the sudden light. Phil's face is there, upside-down, but Clint doesn't mind because Phil is smiling at him. It's the forced smile that says he's going to go destroy something very carefully, much later, in private. Once he took apart a motorcycle with a screwdriver and hacksaw, and Clint doesn't know who got the job of putting it back together again. He hopes it was someone's punishment detail, but he's always suspected Phil did it himself.

Clint figures if opening his eyes has worked, maybe the talking thing will work now, too, and he gives it a shot. One inhalation later he's coughing and the world has exploded into small pink bubbles and Phil is wearing a bright green suit and sporting a leprechaun’s hat. Steve has three eyes and fangs, which actually look pretty good on him, but above his shoulder Iron Man has shrunk down to seven inches and looks exactly like Tinkerbell. Or, Clint amends, like his action figure.

Clint knows this, because he owns the entire set -- save one, because he can't figure out how to go into a store and buy himself without it looking incredibly lame. But he has the Iron Man and Captain America and the Black Widow and Thor and two of the Hulk because there was a limited series of Hulk with the wrong color hair. He even owns a Phil Coulson figure, because the toy company is nothing if not thorough and Clint sees nothing wrong with setting up a replica of his boyfriend on the bookshelf to glare at him when the real thing isn't around.

Most of his teammates pretend they don't think it's weird, although the first time Tony saw his figure on Clint's shelf, he snorted and said he could do better. Two days later Clint had a seven-inch Iron Man that could do everything the real Iron Man did, scaled down appropriately to size. Clint makes the Iron Man fire his repulsors and fly around the room, taunting the Captain America who just stands there and looks unaffected. Clint lets him throw his shield at Iron Man's head sometimes, and Steve once told him that wasn't nice. The look on his face said something else, Clint thinks.

Clint takes video of all of it and Natasha helps him edit them and upload the clips to the internet. The one with the most hits is, of course, the one where Thor is making his action figure destroy a LEGO City gas station (taken over by LEGO aliens) with its tiny plastic hammer. The look of concentration on Thor's face still makes Clint wonder if Thor realised the fight was pretend.

Clint realises he's maybe lost track of things when he realises Phil has been saying his name and his voice is growing alarmed. He tries to focus, and is glad to see the hat disappear. Clint doesn't want to risk talking again, and just looks at Phil, wondering if anyone will explain.

Phil smiles, and Clint is no longer quite so worried about the motor pool's bikes. "You were hit with a psychotropic agent," Phil is saying, and he sounds completely relaxed and Clint wonders if he's misheard. 'Psychotropic' doesn't sound good, it sounds like hallucinations and people turning into leprechauns and pixies. But Phil is just watching him and he genuinely looks like there's nothing really wrong, and Clint finds himself relaxing without meaning to.

"Just breathe," Phil says and he brushes his hand through Clint's hair again. Clint's head is beginning to ache a little, and his shoulder hurts from where he tried to wrench himself free. There are bruises and scrapes all over and he suspects that when someone ends up saying he has to sleep it off in Medical, he will agree without much arguing.

He lets his mouth fall open, carefully takes a deep breath of oxygen. There's no coughing this time, no explosion of daisies around Natasha's head and Thor does not appear to be astride a unicorn. 

Clint blinks and double checks. No unicorn, and Natasha is glaring at him like he said the bit about the flowers out loud. He's feeling exhausted, though, and Clint lets his eyes turn back to Phil, who is watching him with a strange expression on his face. Calm and collected, like there is no crisis here, but also...something. Clint focuses on just breathing and as he takes a breath he realises Phil is breathing in sync with him. Phil is rubbing Clint's arm with two fingers, back and forth, and they are both breathing in rhythm to the motion.

"Shh," Phil says as Clint tries to speak. Clint closes his eyes again, because he's worn out and there seems to be no need to stay awake. The oxygen fills his lungs with every breath, and he can almost feel the dusty pink of the drug ebbing out of his system. The hand on his grips tightly, once, then Clint exhales and the darkness swallows him up.

~~~

"I don't understand why I have to stay here," Clint demands and he knows from the look Phil gives him that he's whining. Clint doesn't care; he's bored and he's been stuck in Medical for three days, now, and he's fine. Mostly fine, and if he still sometimes sees frogs pop out of the walls at least he isn't throwing things at them anymore. 

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response," Phil says, unconcerned with Clint's plight. "If we hadn't gotten you free you would have died," he adds, not so much as glancing over at Clint, belying the emotion behind the words Clint thinks he has heard before. 

The details of what happened are still vague, but he knows that he was hit by something -- creating a diversion so the bad guys could escape and it would have worked except Hulk had sat on them. Clint had been choking to death for real before they'd got the oxygen mask on him, and now his boyfriend won't even sneak him a pizza in under his jacket. Clint thinks there is something very wrong with this picture.

Phil is sitting beside Clint's bed, typing on a laptop. Ignoring him, because _Phil_ is allowed to work and Clint is allowed to lie in bed and breathe and let nurses take his blood whenever they feel a bit peckish. Clint knows better than to use that phrase out loud, of course, because the nurses are also in charge of his bed pan and catheter and sponge baths, and Clint has met Nurse Joseph Crosby once and would like to never, ever do so ever again in his lifetime. He asked Phil to get Crosby re-assigned someplace cold, where Ice Giants are bound to be more comfortable. Phil just snorted and said something about behaving and maybe Crosby wouldn't stick his hands in the freezer for five minutes before tending to Clint.

Clint thinks this is all completely unfair, but no one is listening to him when he points out that he whines because he's _bored._ "You hate me," he says, and there's a muffled noise from Phil.

"Yes, that's exactly it," Phil agrees, still typing and Clint thinks he's paying more attention to his files than to Clint.

"I'm going to break out of here," Clint says, and it isn't the first time he'd decided that. The first two attempts failed because the walls and doors wouldn't stay in one place, but Clint had just figured out the trick of feeling his way when he'd been found and frog-marched back to his bed. Really, all he wants is to lie in his own bed, at home, where there's room enough for someone to join him. 

There's a sigh from Phil and Clint looks over, wondering belatedly how much of what he'd been thinking had come out of his mouth. Phil is smiling and he closes the laptop, reaching over to take Clint's hand.

"Your blood work should be clear in another day or two," Phil says, with the patient tone of someone who has said these words many times before. "As soon as we're sure you won't shoot at something only you can see, you'll be released."

"You can't just take me home and lock up the weapons?" 

Phil rolls his eyes, and Clint remembers having this exact same conversation the day before. Or something that feels like a day ago.

Maybe he's still a little foggy, he thinks. He ignores the squirrel waving at him from behind Phil and tries to look fully in charge of his senses. "Can't I at least have something to do?" 

There's a smirk on Phil's face and Clint remembers this conversation happening before, as well. Something about staying awake for more than ten minutes. Clint glares at Phil, then glares at the squirrel, too, for good measure and he thinks about what his retort was the first time (or two) so he can say something different this time. Prove his point by being coherent, Clint thinks, then he falls backwards off the bed and he's been dreaming for some time before he realises he's gone back asleep.

When he wakes up again he concedes Phil's point, and Phil's surprise tells Clint all he needs to know about maybe he's finally starting to get better.

He knows not to ask why Phil is wearing a tutu, however.

the end


End file.
